


Symmetry

by Zelos



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Loss of Control, Loss of Innocence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelos/pseuds/Zelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like the humans before them, they fought on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Symmetry

**Author's Note:**

> For [Demenior](http://demenior.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr, specifically, [this](http://demenior.tumblr.com/post/75163407674/fic-where-jean-and-steve-still-infested-with) prompt.
> 
> I hope this vaguely resembles what you're looking for.

The air was thick with tension. Hork-Bajir guards paced around the cages, tails lashing in agitation. The voluntary Controllers talked nervously amongst themselves. Yeerks sloshed and churned in their pool. Taxxons hissed and patrolled, keeping many wary eyes about for suspicious activity.

This was open war, and the Yeerks were _afraid_. Afraid of a band of schoolchildren. Afraid of their Visser. Afraid of this planet which should have been so easily overtaken.

The resistance. Six children brought an army—not to its knees (not yet), but to the edge of fear. This army, which had conquered countless species within the galaxy.

Fear.

Steve and Jean Berenson were on their knees in a corner of their too-crowded cage, hands reaching through to grab whatever shreds of hope they could…to touch their son as themselves, the son who was—however temporarily—himself again.

“Tom,” Steve whispered, clutching at his pant leg.

Tom Berenson was on the other side of the bars, held down by two Hork-Bajir warriors. Now that he was morph-capable, being held in the cages with the other unwilling host was too much of a security risk.

“It’s okay, Dad.” Tom looked over his shoulder to smile at them. He struggled very little, knowing it was futile. Only a sharp twist here and there, enough to keep the Hork-Bajir on their toes. Enough for their blades to nick his face, his arms, shallow cuts oozing blood.

He has the same smile as Jake. Steady, reassuring, and _bloodied_.

“It’s okay,” he said again. One Hork-Bajir grunted and pushed his head in warning, which he ignored. The Hork-Bajir were gentle, just barely. Tom’s Yeerk would throw a fit if any subordinates damaged his host.

“ _Okay?_ ” Jean choked through a blur of tears. “How could—none of this— _Jake—_ ”

“It’s okay,” Tom repeated for the third time, and he was the only creature who was calm in this entire complex. “Jake will save us.”

The Hork-Bajir growled and shoved his head again, harder this time; Tom’s head hit the floor.

“ _Tom!_ ”

Tom was quiet for a moment as he regained his bearings, but his next grin was full of teeth, aimed up at the guards.

“Watch it,” he said softly. “Don’t want to hurt the host body, now.” Even held down, he seemed to swagger.

The guard snarled. Tom held his gaze, goading. The red darkened to a bruise, livid and bright.

“He will save us,” Tom continued, once the guards relented. “They always wondered, y’know…why the bandits let humans off easy. Far beyond any reasonable attempt at staying inconspicuous. And…now we know.” There was a light in his eyes, fervent and fierce; his grin stretched, manic across his face. “Three years of holding back, holding his silence. All bets are off now. You’ll see. They hate him _so bad._ ”

“ _Harujin!_ Human!” The guards, tired of the discussion, hauled Tom towards the pier.

“TOM!” Steve and Jean yelled as one, their hands torn free from their son.

“It’s okay, Mom, Dad,” Tom called back, that same brilliant, macabre, bloodless smile on his face. “He’ll save us. You’ll see.”

She watched him get dragged away, eyes blurred, a knot in her throat and lead in her chest, _hope-madness-grief_. Watched, barely blinking, as Tom’s head was shoved below the water and the Controller emerged again.

_He’ll save us. You’ll see._

“He’ll save us,” her husband echoed dully beside her; she curled into him, sobbing. Repeated the words to herself, a brittle mantra of hope.

And still repeated it fifteen minutes later, repeated it endlessly, as a train jackknifed into the Yeerk Pool. As Tom grew wings and flew away.

 

The Animorphs made one miscalculation when they ended the battle of The Hague: they did not destroy the Kandrona. Rather, Kandrona _s_ —because even Visser One learned. Two Kandronas—two life-sources that were smaller, more easily hidden, more _mobile_ —were far safer than one, security be damned.

They lost the Yeerk pool, lost the battle (war) before another pool could be built. But a Yeerk pool was only that size to service thousands. A handful of renegade Yeerks? Any pond would do, with the full power of two serviceable Kandronas. And with a few hours of programming, with the right security codes and a functioning computer uplink, the renegades could reprogram the Kandronas to beam the life-saving Kandrona rays elsewhere. Moving miniature Yeerk pools, for as long there was a Yeerk to draw breath, a Controller with fingers. And so long as the Kandronas kept moving, and the pools themselves kept changing, even the Andalites would be hard-pressed to trace the Kandronas…if they deigned to work with humans in the first place.

But even that was not forever. Like the humans before them, they were just borrowing time.

“We do not defect,” Sub-Visser Fifteen had announced, every word a threat. “We do not surrender. We fight to the last, for glory, for the Empire.” Her human eyes blazed. “For our freedom. The stars are worth a war.”

Like the humans before them, they fought on.

“Guerilla warfare, Jake the Yeerk-Killer?” Sub-Visser Twenty-Five had said softly, hand in a fist. “We can play, too.”

 _He’s not a killer_ , but Jake was—he was, a thousand times over. Her baby boy, who’d spent his afternoons at Cassie’s barn, mucking out the stables. Her baby boy, who’d occasionally help Cassie tend to the animals’ injuries if he didn’t get squicked out. Her Jake, who bawled when he accidentally broke Homer’s leg— _Homer’s_ leg, not even his own.

Her baby boy was a killer. _He’d killed his own brother_.

<You’re a killer, too,> her Yeerk told her viciously as her unwilling hands closed around the trigger.

One shot, two shots, three. Somewhere along the line, she learned to shoot.

Jean wished she could close her eyes.

 

Ironically, it was the morph-capable members of the resistance who’d gotten captured first. Andalites, of course—they could track the energy signatures of their morphing technology. Even the Yeerks could do this much.

But the mundane ones, the humans? They were untraceable. Humans everywhere. Missing, injured, dead. Too many in every category. Short of walking into the Animorphs, no one could tell Jean from Jane Smith.

The Animorphs gave chase, of course. Human-Controllers knew how to blend into human environments, but _hide_ was not _escape_. And every time they skirmished, the resistance lost.

She wanted to think she (and Steve) lived because Jake let them live.

“Drive!” her voice snapped; she was up to her elbows in blood as she tried to bandage an eviscerated man. Eviscerated by tiger claws. A horrible way to die.

Ripped apart by a hail of bullets and Dracon fire was a horrible way to die too. But the Animorphs didn’t die. They just formed a wall of fur and claws and teeth in the midst of battle, as the injured demorphed and remorphed. The Animorphs had no more use for secrecy…or mercy.

 _They_ didn’t heal like that. The Animorphs could morph away their wounds. Why couldn’t she? Why couldn’t they?

A week passed, then two. Then two more. Every sleep was uneasy, with weapons inches away. Nightmares every night (full of fur and teeth and horrible animal roars), if one could quell the fear enough to sleep. _Jake_ was adapted into Yeerkish as a curse, alongside _Beast Elfangor_.

Elfangor. Yet another hero who had made it into the realms of legend with blood on his hands (tail). Her Yeerk delighted in telling her stories, every word twisting the knife a little more—every comparison made between Jake and Elfangor, drawing the bridge between butcher and knight.

How had Jake done it? How had he smiled and laughed and gone to school, chatted with Tom at the dinner table? How had he masked the war, the killing, the losing your soul every day?

 _He’s saving the world,_ she told herself.

<You don’t even believe that,> her Yeerk shot back.

No. No, she really didn’t.

 

Steve lost hope before she did. “He’s not coming for us.” He curled up in his binds, bound to the doorknob, face a painted mask of despair.

She nearly kicked him. “Don’t _say_ that.”

“Don’t you see—he’s written us off!” he was screaming now. “How long—how long—he’s not Jake anymore, not _our_ Jake!”

She _did_ kick him, again and again. She’d have punched him if she wasn’t tied up. “He’s my baby!”

Steve let her kick him, let her scream, because that was all he could do, other than scream back. “He sent _Rachel_ to kill _Tom!_ He can’t come back from that. Our Jake—the Jake we raised—he is—was—a _good boy_. He can’t survive that. There’s nothing left!”

“No, no, no,” she sobbed, bruised hope twisting to grief. “Don’t you—you don’t get it—he’s my baby boy!”

Steve’s face crumpled. “He’s my baby boy too, Jean.”

 

WHAM!

CRRRUUUUUUUUUNCH!

The reinforced steel door crumpled and was thrown off its hinges by (not a grizzly bear, never again) Hork-Bajir warriors and a gorilla. Animals spilled in, and at their forefront, a Siberian tiger.

For a fraction of a second, everything—everyone—stopped.

Jake’s felid eyes stared straight at them, at the unwilling hands curling around Glocks, Berettas, and Dracon beams. Stared unblinkingly at them, as if he could see past the eyes and skull and into the trapped humans. As if he could see the Yeerks, wrapped around their brains. As if that was _all_ he saw.

Then—loudly, publically—in a flat, unemotional voice meant to terrify as much as command, he said one word.

<Go.>


End file.
